401–410 of 576 posts
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That sounds like the kind of phrase I would use as a mild joke while hanging out with someone. It's my sense of humor sometimes to be intentionally fancy because it sounds pretentious.
Someone please tell me what's the correct way of saying this
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"A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education." There's the opposite problem, too, where people with poor educations will try to use fancy words to impress people (but often wind up just sounding pretentious). One of my pet peeves is hearing people using the word "utilize". Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing. I…
> It sounds more natural Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself? Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka? My father was felled by Alzheimers. What…
This reminds me of William Gibson's Sprawl slang, of Anthony Burgess' Nadsat slang from A Clockwork Orange, and of Cockney rhyming slang, thieves' cant, etc.
That sort of use can have a certain appealing charm to it in small doses (or might be annoying, depending on who you talk to and what you say), but unfortunately I don't think most users of "utilize" and the like rise to that level.
As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…
As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…
My Spanish girl friend at the time was among the first batches to take the computer-adaptive version of the GRE (which increases difficulty as you get questions right, and vice versa). While preparing for the verbal part, she noted that the "difficult" words being explained were often words she knew (to lament, intransigent), while the "simple" explanation involved words she had to learn (to mourn, unyielding).
This could then lead to a positive feedback cycle for native Spanish speakers taking the test - get the first few questions right, get "harder" questions with long Latin words (easy!), or get the first few questions wrong, and get "easier" questions with short Germanic words (oh no).
Her test score was indeed many standard deviations away from the paper based practice tests she had taken - but only on the verbal part.
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And you probably got off lightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8
Ha ha :) That video is priceless. And I experienced this first hand. If you get 5 or more kms outside Dublin, people start sounding gibberish.
What a dumb and ignorant thing to say.
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What languages do you speak? I speak Spanish and have been learning Polish for a few years because my wife's family immigrated from there, and many are still in Poland, with some only speaking Polish... can't have the in-laws talking trash without me knowing :) Spanish is generally straightforward and consistent, though the huge number of dialects can be a challenge for practical communication. Polish is a goddamn ni…
I speak German and Hungarian, and I'm trying to learn Thai but between lockdown and my age it's going very slowly. I'm properly fluent in German but I learned it when I was a teenager and studied German literature at university. Hungarian took me a while (as in years) and there are still bits of it I don't get, but I'm fluent-ish for most practical purposes. It's not an Indo-European language and it has agglutinative…
Yeah no kidding.
I first ran into this with white/rice/? (I forget the third definition of kao). So now whenever my wife/MIL is trying to show me the difference in tone between “different” words like that my response to them is usually “kao, kao, kao”.
For anyone who hasn’t tried to learn Thai: a number of words are pronounced almost exactly the same (the way there and their are in English) but with slightly different tone.
The example I give above (“kao”) is pronounced basically like cow, but the tone means you’re saying either white, rice (yes white rice technically is kao kao but no one says that) or... something else I still can’t remember.
I’ll freely admit I’m quite bad at languages other than English. I didn’t do fantastically when they introduced Japanese at school, and I struggle with Thai a lot, particularly to comprehend native speakers because they typically abbreviate everything and speak very quickly (even to a foreigner with a confused look on his face). Speaking one tiny (and no doubt grammatically imperfect) phrase makes that worse because they assume you’re fluent and speak more/faster.
As an example: “thank you” gets shortened from three syllables to one in pretty much every encounter I’ve experienced - even with government officials like police and immigration; the syllable that remains is the last one, which is just a “word” added to make the sentence polite.
I wish I spoke more and I am learning bit by bit but even learning through immersion isn’t fast, for me at least.
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I (native English speaker) have noticed this a lot. The example that I remember most vividly is receiving advice while trying to cook food on a barbecue: A Portuguese speaking friend suggested that I "move the burgers to the periphery of the barbecue". It make perfect sense but sounded incredibly fancy to me. A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education.
"A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education." There's the opposite problem, too, where people with poor educations will try to use fancy words to impress people (but often wind up just sounding pretentious). One of my pet peeves is hearing people using the word "utilize". Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing. I…
I shall avail myself of that advice.
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Someone please tell me what's the correct way of saying this
"edge of the barbecue"
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> It sounds more natural Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself? Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka? My father was felled by Alzheimers. What…
"I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka?" This reminds me of William Gibson's Sprawl slang, of Anthony Burgess' Nadsat slang from A Clockwork Orange , and of Cockney rhyming slang, thieves' cant, etc. That sort of use can have a certain appealing charm to it in small doses (o…
I'm bemused by cop jargon like "vehicle". Even journalists, when covering crimes, slip into saying "vehicle".
> rhyming slang
I like dazzuble dazzutch, but am not very good at it, fo shizzle.
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"A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education." There's the opposite problem, too, where people with poor educations will try to use fancy words to impress people (but often wind up just sounding pretentious). One of my pet peeves is hearing people using the word "utilize". Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing. I…
> It sounds more natural Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself? Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka? My father was felled by Alzheimers. What…
So the scenario in question is "someone trying to fit in with the upper classes" to which your response is something like "use the language however you like"--which is a fine thing to say, and no doubt especially easy to say for those of us who have the ability to speak in the upper class dialect/register, but that's not the stated goal. I.e., if you're trying to fit in with the upper classes, using "utilize" is a tell that you don't fit in (IMO the upper class register prefers to use very few words to convey a lot of meaning; precise, terse, and fashionable vocabulary is the name of the game)--if your goal is to use English however you like, and if you like "utilize" instead of "use", then go right ahead.